“At the ‘Hop-Pole’ at Tewkesbury they stopped to dine; upon which occasion there was more bottled ale, with some more Madeira, and some port besides; and here the case-bottle was replenished for the fourth time.” Therefore, it is evident that, twice on the twenty-four miles between Berkeley Heath and Tewkesbury, they had a re-fill.
We do not find Gloucester mentioned, although it must have been passed on the way; but, under those circumstances, we are by no means surprised.
The “Hop Pole” at Tewkesbury is still a “going concern,” and, with the adjoining gabled and timbered houses, is a notable landmark in the High Street. Nowadays it proudly displays a tablet recording its Pickwickian associations.
A drunken sleep (for it could have been nothing else) composed those two “insides,” Mr. Pickwick and Ben Allen, on the way to Birmingham, while, thanks in part to the fresh air, Sam Weller and Bob Sawyer “sang duets in the dickey.” By the time they were nearing Birmingham it was quite dark. The postboy drove them to the “Old Royal Hotel,” where an order for that surely very necessary thing, soda-water, having been given, the waiter “imperceptibly melted away”: a proceeding that, paradoxically enough, seems to have been initiated by the house itself, years before; for it was about 1825, two years before the Pickwickians are represented as starting on their travels, that the “Old Royal” was transferred from Temple Row to New Street, and there became the “New Royal.”
The inn at Coventry, at which the post-horses were changed on the journey from Birmingham, is unnamed, unhonoured, and unsung; but very famous, in the Pickwickian way, is the “Saracen’s Head” at Towcester, or “Toaster,” as the townsfolk call it, even though its identity is a little obscured by the sign having been exchanged for that of the “Pomfret Arms.” The change, which was actually made in April, 1831, was a complimentary allusion to the Earls of Pomfret, who before the title became extinct, in 1867, resided at the neighbouring park of Easton Neston.
THE “HOP-POLE,” TEWKESBURY.
In all essentials the inn remains the same as the old coaching hostelry to which Mr. Pickwick and his friends drove up in their post-chaise, after the long wet journey from Coventry. As “at the end of each stage it rained harder than it had done at the beginning,” Mr. Pickwick wisely decided to halt here.
“There’s beds here,” reported Sam; “everything’s clean and comfortable. Wery good little dinner, sir, they can get ready in half an hour—pair of fowls, sir, and a weal cutlet; French beans, ’taturs, tarts, and tidiness. You’d better stop vere you are, sir, if I might recommend.”
